My name was written on it in uneven five-year-old letters.
MOMMY.
My hands shook so violently I nearly tore it.
Inside was a drawing.
Me and Ethan holding hands beneath a giant yellow sun.
Beside us stood Grandpa William with a cape.
Far away, near the corner of the page, Garrett stood alone under a gray cloud.
On the back, in letters helped by someone older, was a message:
Mommy, don’t be sad forever. I want you to smile when I’m in heaven. Grandpa says love is bigger than goodbye.
I pressed the paper to my chest and broke.
Not the clean crying people do in movies.
The kind that empties bone.
A week later, my father admitted he had helped Ethan write it during one of their hospital visits. He had not known it would become a goodbye.
None of us had.
Months passed.
The trial began.
Vanessa stared at me from across the courtroom as if she expected hatred to make me interesting.
I gave her nothing.
Andrew would not meet my eyes.
Garrett did once.
Only once.
When he testified, his voice broke on Ethan’s name, but he told the truth. Every ugly inch of it. His affair. His debt. The hotel. The missed calls. The brother he had trusted.
When the guilty verdicts came, cameras flashed outside the courthouse.
Reporters shouted questions.
“Mrs. Vale, do you feel justice was served?”
I looked into the lenses and thought of Ethan’s hand in mine.
“No,” I said. “Justice would be my son alive.”
Then I took my father’s arm and walked away.
